God's Imitator-Chapter 352: Exploiting Loopholes

After another simple practice session, he placed the duplicate Death Immunity Card on the grid below the game station and concentrated on playing the game.

His goal was to at least achieve an A rating.

If he got a B rating, not only would it reduce his profits, but it would also cause the item to become damaged, adding a perforation to it. Although this probably wouldn't affect the immunity effect, it would inevitably still impact the item's value.

Finally, as the clanging sounds ended, He Xiaojun's forging was successful.

He hurriedly retrieved the new item card from the grid below and found that it had been converted into another type of Death Immunity Card, "Boots."

"Excellent!"

He Xiaojun was very happy. The duplicate card problem had been smoothly resolved. Now he just needed to continue earning profits.

He carefully put away the Death Immunity Card and returned to the ‘Auction Tycoon’ room, preparing to continue auctioning items to obtain profits.

He Xiaojun had also discovered that the single-player mode in ‘Sea Minesweeper’ could also steadily produce chips, and after the dividend quota increased, the profits were quite good too.

But comparing it to the situation in ‘Auction Tycoon,’ there wasn't much difference in profits between the two.

Players in the single-player mode of ‘Sea Minesweeper’ were still streaming in continuously. He Xiaojun wasn't sure if he could secure a spot, so he ultimately decided to stay in ‘Auction Tycoon’ to earn stable profits.

...

At the same time, Xu Zhao was continuously earning chips at one of the game stations in ‘Equipment Forging’ while also observing the situation in the room.

Clearly, the number of players coming to this room to play had noticeably increased. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Many players had come to play specifically to convert the Death Immunity Cards in their hands to different body parts.

This included players who had originally been obtaining stable profits in the single-player modes of ‘Simple Poker’ and ‘Compare Sizes.’

They were all trying to avoid transaction taxes.

Xu Zhao himself was the designer of ‘Chess Endgame,’ so he clearly understood the psychology of these God's Imitators.

Most God's Imitators, in order to increase the competitiveness of their game rooms, set the room's rake to 0% to attract players.

But because they couldn't earn profits from the rake, these rooms had to increase transaction tax profits instead.

Otherwise, if profits were insufficient, the God's Imitators would still face the risk of death.

But the God's Imitator of the ‘Equipment Forging’ room had thought an extra layer beyond this. He had actually designed a game that could change the type of Death Immunity Cards.

In other words, after players obtained duplicate Death Immunity Cards, they didn't need to list them on the auction terminal at all. Instead, they could directly convert them in the ‘Equipment Forging’ room by consuming chips from this room.

Of course, this conversion also had costs. Each conversion consumed chips, and if players couldn't stably achieve an A rating, once they got a B or C rating, the Death Immunity Card would immediately become damaged or even disappear.

Moreover, players most likely couldn't convert to the card they wanted in just one try.

For example, if a player currently had four cards of different body parts and one duplicate card, and wanted to convert this duplicate card into the one missing card, each attempt only had a 25% success rate (Death Immunity Cards wouldn't be converted to the same body part).

But regardless, this was still much more cost-effective than paying transaction taxes.

Because in those rooms with 30% transaction taxes, even if a Death Immunity Card only sold for 10,000 minutes of visa time, 3,000 would be deducted. This was not a small amount.

The first forging in ‘Equipment Forging’ only cost 500 chips, which was very cost-effective. Players would always have some wishful thinking, wanting to try it first.

Once players had sunk costs in this room, they would be even more unwilling to list items on the auction terminal.

The God's Imitator of ‘Equipment Forging’ was exploiting this player psychology, wanting to directly monopolize the entire "card replacement" business in the game and profit from it.

As for how exactly the God's Imitator of ‘Equipment Forging’ earned profits?

Xu Zhao speculated that the basic rules for God's Imitators had mentioned that they could earn profits through rakes or transaction taxes, but could also earn profits through other methods.

The way ‘Equipment Forging’ earned profits was most likely through these additional losses.

For instance, players might fail when forging equipment, causing the equipment to disappear. Forging equipment itself required investing a certain amount of chips, and these chips were essentially the same in nature as the rakes and transaction taxes collected by many rooms.

As long as there were enough players in this room producing enough forging attempts, the God's Imitator wouldn't worry at all about their profit situation.

Xu Zhao couldn't help but feel frustrated. "How did I not think of making an issue out of Death Immunity Cards back then?"

Clearly, the God's Imitator who designed the ‘Equipment Forging’ game room had exploited a loophole in the game rules.

The Gallery's attitude toward God's Imitators had always been "whatever is not prohibited is permitted." Since there was no explicit rule stating "you cannot design game mechanics to convert cards," then it was allowed.

Of course, the God's Imitator took on risk by making such a design, but the rules for designing this game unit had been very lenient to begin with. As long as it passed review, the rules could take effect.

It could only be said that Xu Zhao, as a rookie God's Imitator who had just obtained his qualification, had lost both in terms of thinking and courage.

He didn't dare design similar mechanics, but those experienced God's Imitators did.

However, for Xu Zhao, the current situation was still acceptable because his circumstances had improved somewhat.

As more and more players noticed the issue of "chip currency inflation," and with the dividend quotas in each room increasing after entering the second hour, some players had also begun entering ‘Chess Endgame’ to play.

Chen Guangming's plan was still advancing smoothly.

If all went well, when Chen Guangming began reeling in his net and was willing to fulfill his promise to bring people into ‘Chess Endgame’ to farm game counts, Xu Zhao should still be able to earn enough profits.

After all, ‘Chess Endgame’ had a rake, so it originally had higher profits than those rooms with 0% rakes.

...

Soon, another half hour passed.

The fourth dividend distribution.

The game had entered its final hour, and the players had also noticeably become restless.

He Xiaojun was again the first to arrive at the entrance of the ‘Auction Tycoon’ room to exchange chips at the chip exchange counter.

This time his profits were slightly higher than before. He earned just over 20,000 chips and exchanged 20,000 of them for visa time.

Through repeated attempts, He Xiaojun had also roughly determined more details about how the system bought back items in the ‘Auction Tycoon’ room.

First, it had to be ‘Auction Voucher’ type items that players purchased from the auction house. The system wouldn't buy other items, which could only wait for other players to purchase them.

Second, when listing these items for auction, the pricing couldn't be too outrageous. Once it exceeded a certain amount, the system would no longer buy them.

Third, players would only have one item sold at the same time, and only then could other items be sold. Additionally, depending on factors like the item's type and sale price, the intervals between item sales varied.

Finally, if multiple players all listed items for auction, the auction house would comprehensively decide the order of purchases based on factors such as the item's type, sale price, and scarcity.

Of course, because there were too many influencing factors, He Xiaojun couldn't test every situation and therefore found it difficult to optimize the auction process perfectly.

However, after attempting it, just grasping the rough rules was enough for him to obtain decent profits.

He Xiaojun looked at the two new cards he had obtained, which were an armguard and a helmet respectively.

"Another helmet?

"But it's fine. I just need to go to the 'Equipment Forging' room to exchange it."